Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community" | Hacker News Reader

Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

github.com

There’s comments on the issue that suggest that this is impacting any YouTube user rather than just Invidious users: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/4734#issuecomment...

It's not just any random user. That's the mobile DDG browser that's being targeted. I guess user agents aren't allowed anymore, only spy agents that tattle on the user.

yt-dlp also: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/10128

Using own smaller, simpler client instead of yt-dlp, I tested the videoId mentioned in that page. No problems with IOS user agent.

NewPipe still working so far.

FYI - you can't be sure which side of the A/B test you are on.

I had interpreted the news as affecting all users of the other tools. Now found https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/11139 with very few comments so I don't get the impression it's affecting many NewPipe users at present.

Newpipe is amazing, just keeps on going through a lot of Google's attempts to block it.

I use individious because the current youtube frontend is bloated and slow on firefox. Maybe they should focus on improving their frontend instead of blocking frontends that other people prefer.

>Maybe they should focus on improving their frontend

They have. Do you know how many ads they can stuff into people's faces now?

Youtube is unbearable without ablock. If there are people who are able to watch it like that, then it shows just how long you can boil the proverbial frog.

Paying for YT premium is even better. No ads and you support the content creators

YT premium unfortunately scales very poorly for low usage. I probably average about one youtube video watched per month, so while I'm not opposed to paying something, I am opposed to watching any ads, and I'm not going to pay $13/video.

With the family plan, the cost calculation is very different

Blocking ads can be viewed as theft from the creators and many creators do see it this way

My wife doesn't use youtube to any significant degree either, so the cost calculation doesn't notably change with the family plan. Obviously if your usage is significantly different the cost calculation is different, which was my point from the start.

> Blocking ads can be viewed as theft from the creators and many creators do see it this way

And nobody should care.

Unless it is AI doing the stealing, many people care about their content being consumed by machines but are happy to block ads at the same time

If no one is supporting them they won't exist.

This is a false equivocation, blocking ads doesn't mean nobody will be supporting them. Anyway watching ads enriches Google far more than the creators. You can block all ads indiscriminately and send money directly to the creators you care about.

If everyone blocked ads it means exactly that. People can send money directly to the people who can set that up. If not enough people send money then the creator moves on.

Aren't you cheating yourself out of future content? Whatever you like doesn't matter to the creator.

You also support a shitty advertising business model.

and horrible censorship

I used YT premium until I realized I was still getting ads from the videos themselves.

Install sponsorblock, that’ll take care of that.

Likewise, Dearrow is also a must have to kill the horrible clickbait YouTube incentivizes.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

https://dearrow.ajay.app/

Thank you _so_ much for that recommendation. I've been so frustrated that even authors I like have started to create clickbait.

Are you worried if everyone blocks revenue generating activities they will stop making the content you like?

No. I prefer watching people who don't do it for the money.

Some of those people are in it for the money. Your interest won't matter to them.

Their interest doesn't matter to me. I don't watch ads.

It should because you watch their content. What they decide matters to you.

Right now what you like doesn't matter. You are a ghost roaming.

I will continue to roam. When I don't enjoy content, I won't watch.

But I won't watch ads.

Yes, so I support people via Patreon.

I am not

Why would you want content other people pick?

Even if youtube disappeared today, there would be more "content" available in the world than I could ever consume.

I don't mind the ads that creators put there themselves. I skip them but I still see them so they've done their job IMO while not wasting my time.

I hear this a lot, and would love to see some figures.

If I'm a heavy YT Premium user, is it possible for my views to be worth less than ad-generated views?

you still get the baked-in ads, and I get weird ads when watching video embedded in other websites.

If you get baked-in ads, it's because of the editor of the video you're watching, not YouTube.

SponsorBlock generally works well for auto-skipping the baked-in ads, but of course only works on the website, not in the YT app.

Revanced has a patch that makes sponsor block work on the android app.

And Nebula.tv is best of all. No ads, you support the content creators, and you don't feed YouTube's near-monopoly on video distribution.

This sounds like YT premium, but just a different platform that has no ad supported option. These platforms are dependent on the network effect and the creators and viewers are only going to use a limited number of platforms (2-4)

Nebula was started by a bunch of very popular YT creators looking to bring their audience with them.

Youtube premium is insanely good value for money if you're at all a regular Youtube user. And content creators get paid significantly more for Premium views than ad supported views.

>And content creators get paid significantly more for Premium views than ad supported views.

I'm curious how that works. After all, there's still only $14 per Premium user per month to go around.

YouTube is borderline unusable now. For the last 6 months when I browse to YT - on any device - I get a blank page (no suggested content) with a decoy search box in the center of the page. When I click it, focus moves from the decoy to a second, real search box which unfurls at the top, but the cursor does not move and requires a subsequent click. This means on mobile I have to tap twice - in two different locations on the page - before I can start typing a search query.

Google needs to fire their entire UI/UX staff, this is "my first website" levels of usability. 2004-era websites were more functional.

>2004-era websites were more functional

Modern computing in a nutshell.

Try the firefox mobile browser

I’ve been using Firefox for maybe 15 years. It has always been great. But in the past year or so, I’m finding that more and more web experiences are buggy and slow in Firefox, which is really frustrating.

I don’t know if it’s that developers don’t do sufficient QA testing in Firefox, or the creators of Firefox have fallen behind.

Either way it doesn’t bode well. I’m being forced to reach for Chrome more and more just to get certain websites to work, especially ChatGPT. It is way buggier in Firefox than Chrome. It feels like OpenAI doesn’t have a single person doing QA testing in Firefox, and why should they? It’s a sliver of the market.

If anyone at Mozilla/Firefox is reading this, this is really bad. This is the kind of thing that signals the death of something in the not too distant future.

Some of this is intentional on websites from Google. Google sheets has a very very annoying bug where if you want to multiply two values in a cell formula and press the asterisk key, the cursor jumps to the left of the asterisk. You then have to manually place the cursor to the right of the asterisk (since pushing the right arrow key may instead jump to the next cell to the right), breaking any typing flow whatsoever. However, if you fake your Firefox user agent to chrome (but change nothing else), the bug disappears.

I recall reading a post here on HN that Google has been found from time to time to intentionally cripple the FF user agent, which in turn led me to "discover" the sheets bug fix.

This does not change much about what you wrote, but it's at least something to do against malicious incompatibility

Firefox has a built in mechanism for reporting issues to https://webcompat.com

>People expect websites to work regardless of the device or browser they are using. When a site works in one browser but not another, that is most likely a web compatibility bug that we want to know about.

Issue search: https://webcompat.com/issues

https://webcompat.com/issues?q=youtube

Set your user-agent header to be a recent chrome version.

I browse the web this way and I've in total found exactly one problem on any site I've visited in the past year.

Firefox users represent a very small portion of the user-base. Also it's in their interest to nudge you towards chrome, no?

Among minority market-share browsers Safari gets more attention because the users are wealthier -> ad impressions can be sold for more.

Safari users are not necessarily wealthier than Firefox users. Apple skews more mainstream and Firefox skews more techies.

Apple users are likes AOL users of yesteryear. Firefox users are like freenet users. AOL users have more money but are less techie. Firefox users are more techie but broke.

Sure but let's see average user data first before making these claims. Aren't Apple products popular among kids? Kids are usually poor and would bring the wealth average down.

But kids often have parents who aren't poor. IIRC children's toys are a pretty profitable and segment.

The point is wealth per user, not potential wealth per user. Parents don't always buy their kids the same high grade devices that they use.

the funnier part is that the youtube comment section of just about any video is filled with bot comments that logged in. so how is logged in helping at all ???

Community: A group nation, state, or body of people who share a common cultural identity, joint possession or sharing of; property, wealth, ethnicity, social organized relationships, having kinship, mutual obligations etc.

I don't think so Google

Did you mean?

Serf: minion, peon, puppet, slave, captive, chattel, servant, subject, workhorse etc

What is Invidious? An alternative front-end to Google-hosted video content?

yes

https://docs.invidious.io/

https://api.invidious.io/

https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

> Invidious is an alternative front-end to YouTube

Yes. Exactly.

Does it strip ads?

Yes, and it supports Sponsor Block, to skip promotions built into the videos, like those annoying VPN sponsorships.

Well that explains it doesn't it?

I don't think anyone is at a loss for an explanation at this point. The discussion is more around condemnation.

It only loads the video and related information, if that's what you mean.

It is really YouTube's own fault for not securely embedding the ads into the videos.

Sounds like the good ol' vague "For security reasons..." that companies use to excuse various things.

When I'm reading articles on the BBC, it gives me a popover prompting me to log in "to continue". I can immediately close it to no consequence whatsoever.

I have never figured out to what I would possibly be continuing.

I run a personal, private instance and things appear to still be working on my end. I also have some of my favorite channels backed up with tube-archivist. I hope I'm not the only one since a crackdown by Google was only a matter of time...

Google's community is Google, I guess.

The next logical step after your company becomes too large to claim it's "like a family!"

streissand effect here would be nice i suppose.

on another note, i am observing that some alternative frontend are now openly allowing its users to directly get the video data from youtube servers, which might be flying near the sun a bit too much.

That’s exactly how Invidious works, actually. Proxying from the server is an option you can toggle.

One day all your online accounts could be blocked with the message: Your account is blocked. This helps protecting the community. In my case this kinda happened with most social networks on which my accounts are suspended. Yes my opinion is not default. But thats the issue.

Yeah, welcome to cloud feudalism (not a concept I invented). Just like the a serf in feudal lordships of old times, the lord can decide anything and you have to suffer the consequences. Maybe if you scream loud enough they'll hear you, but the castle decides, the henchmen execute and they don't listen to your protests.

If you do not make your own silicon, write your own software, and maintain your own Internet connection, you are at the mercy of vendors and service providers.

If you're finding yourself blocked amoungst MOST social networks, you might consider your tone and language. You've got to be posting pretty vile stuff to get banned from most social networks.

I think he's a drug dealer.

Ad hominem doesn't unmake the validity of their point.

Roel Van de Paar with 2 million bot created videos is still up though.

Because Google has run the numbers and the ad revenue his drivel generates ekes them out a profit.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-oYb2-xN5FbCXy0167Gg

What community?

And by "community" they mean business model.

Google pulling the rug on the open web after years of benefitting from it is a shitty move. Then to inject corporate propaganda into alternative frontends after making the default experience miserable, even not considering the ads, is shittier still.

Where and how do the content creators fit into this?

Presumably many would choose to block Invidious, and many would not. It sounds like none of them get a choice in the matter, which is why it's not crazy to question whether community is used as a euphemism in this case.

> Presumably many would choose to block Invidious, and many would not.

Is this something a creator can do on their own today? How many of them are aware of Invidious?

Negative, and unknown.

Most creators only have a small percentage of revenue from ads. A lot of the creators I like are demonetized anyways. Superchats and paid comments are way more lucrative than ads.

Google is in the malvertising business. Creators are not.

this is just not true, even the huge creators mention that it's usually 30-50% of their revenue.

This is likely skewed by the creators I follow. I imagine there's a lot of youtube poop child audience content that's near 100% ad revenue.

Personally speaking, if low quality "creators" suffer I won't feel bad.

"Community of shareholders"

Gotta love that newspeak!

I'm just gonna drop this here

https://codeberg.org/mister_monster/YouTube2Peertube

In case anyone wants to help resolve this issue once and for all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com